Now Lionhead (post Molyneux) have decided to take all of that, throw it out of the window and create Fable Heroes. This game is a hack and slash multi-player game based loosely on the Fable world, for XBLA.

Now, certain game franchises have split off into the download arena with total success, Lara Croft: Guardian of Light being one such example, so the premise isn’t necessarily a bad one. However Fable Heroes pretty much fails at everything it attempts to be.

For no particular reason, your characters are puppet versions of Fable characters. I guess it seemed like a good idea in Gunstringer so why not in this game? Well the fundamental difference is Gunstringer was a good game. The game game starts off quite promisingly with bold, bright graphics for the cute characters and backgrounds based loosely on Fable locales. And, let’s be honest four-player hack and slash games can be much fun if implemented well. In fact I had hoped for this to be a new Gauntlet.

The general premise is that you and three friends (whether real or AI) battle through hordes of enemies and collect coins as you go. The character classes are split in two with either range attacks or melee attacks. The controls are simple, two attack buttons, light and heavy and a roll button to avoid attacks. That’s pretty much it. Along the way you can open chests that give you power-ups. Some of these are quite handy like the one that makes you twice the size but mostly they seem to do very little to aid you. You do also have a special move but knowing when this is charged is impossible as there is no indicator for it.

There is also no challenge in Fable Heroes.If you die you simply carry, on except you are now a ghost. Being a ghost it seems, is very much like being alive except now you can’t get hurt or collect coins. You can still attack however. Find a heart when you are in this state and you become alive again. It kind of makes the game pointless.

The game’s bright and colourful graphics, an early point of credit soon begin to annoy. Enemies swarm all over the place and with three other characters and coins filling the screen, everything soon becomes a mess. In fact so much so that the devs have put a button to locate your character as a great deal of the time you wont know where you are.

When played with friends the game is enjoyable for about five minutes before you realise that added to the lack of challenge, the game never really progresses. Yes, there are the odd nod towards Fable with sections where you chase chickens etc but in general this is such a bastardisation of a much-loved franchise that you wonder if George Lucas might have had something to do with it.

You might still want to get this game due to some noble thoughts of loyalty to the Fable franchise, but if you expect Gauntlet you will end up with rubber-glove. One of the gloves that customs officers use and we all know what they do with them.

The second title Part of the much hailed Arcade Next promotion much was expected from Bloodforge, indeed the early impressions were very good. Excellent graphics? Check. Giant Weapons? Check. Serious amount of blood and carnage? All present and correct. So do the early impressions last or do they fade faster than an Essex boys tan on return from Ibiza?

Set in a gloomy landscape Bloodforge is a third-person hack and slash title that aims to bring serious full price quality to the download arena. You play Crom a fearsome warrior who had long since given up his maiming days to settle down and have a family. Not content to let him do so the Gods attack and kill his family and the revenge mission begins. Aided by a God (who is also a crow) Crom sets out to destroy the God who took his family away. Okay so no prizes for originality in fact the game begs, borrows and steals ideas from games like God of War and fails to implement them anywhere near as well. Its only saving grace is some competent voice-acting which at least adds some gravitas to a bland and uninteresting story.

At first the game impresses. Its graphics are excellent and the dark eerie backdrops and the visceral combat really hit the spot. The moves that finish off enemies are varied and bloody and hit with satisfaction. There are various weapons and Rage attacks which need to be charged up before unleashed. These attacks will bring about the downfall of some of the larger enemies. There is also Rune attacks although these are pretty much just standard attacks that do more damage, again these have limited usage before expiring.

It takes less than five minutes before you begin to notice things wrong with Bloodforge and not much longer to realise that it is pretty much everything. The combat system suffers terribly with lag the camera jerks about like Janet Jackson with a scorpion in her knickers. Married with the dark and gloomy visuals combat becomes confusing and ultimately uninteresting. The AI is poor and enemies will generally follow you around swinging blindly in your vague direction. The various weapons and moves available do little to add any real variety to the experience, in fact you find yourself returning to the sword you started with as all the other weapons are… well… crap.

However apart from the stolen storyline, terrible combat and frame-rate issues there is an even worse sin that Bloodforge carries. That is the sin of repetition. Not only does it serve up this miserable gameplay experience but it makes you do it over and over and over again. It amounts to nothing more than walk a little bit, fight some ugly nondescript baddie. Walk a bit more, fight a couple more baddies. Walk a bit more, fight a big baddie. Repeat.

The dark and moody backdrops that helped to set the mood early in the game become boring very quickly and rarely change. It is a crime as in general the game looks pretty decent but the character models are poor and the lack of variation in the world is shocking.

After the amazing début on Arcade Next of Trials Evolution we were expecting big things from Bloodforge. Unfortunately what we got was a piss-poor God of War clone with none of the nuances that made that series so great. Boring scenarios, boring characters and boring combat all make up for a simply boring game. It is so bad in fact that it is hard to see how Microsoft allowed it to appear in the Arcade Next arena.

Up next is Fable Heroes and we hope for better things from that.

The little rubber-keyed marvel was designed by Richard Altwasser and Rick Dickson for Sinclair as a serious business computer that could be used at home. Featuring a memory of some impressive 48k it soon became apparent that the machine would find its way into many a home as a gaming hub. Games came on tape, yes tape and if you think the loading times on the PS3 are bad waiting 15 minutes for a game to load on tape only for it to fail at the last second would have really done your nut in. But we didn’t care as long as we finally got to play Way of the Exploding Fist.

The Spectrum really set off the home computer market and for the first time allowed users to type in their own codes to create games for themselves. In fact many of gamings greatest creators started out typing:

10 print “Game4anything is great”

20 goto 10.

Anyone too young to not have a clue what that miraculous piece of code would produce is well, a bit annoying really. In those days computer games magazines like Crash or Sinclair User would print the entire code for a game in the centre pages. Ages would be spent meticulously typing in the codes. With great anticipation, after hours of typing you finally get to type the word ‘run’ only for the screen to return “Error in line 30″. Frantically you would check the page, everything you had typed was exactly what was in the mag. Hours wasted because of a bloody typo. Ah those were the days!!

Looking back with such fond memories we may be wearing rose tinted glasses but how programmers could squeeze entire games into 48k is beyond us. Especially when you consider games like Elite a game about an entire galaxy where you could trade goods fight baddies, dock in space stations. It even featured 3 dimensional vector graphics. In 48k! To put that into perspective a Samsung Galaxy s2 phone has 1 Gigabyte of internal memory. That is 1,048,576 kilobytes, the Speccy had well, 48 and yet managed to produce some truly excellent games.

Manic Minor, Jet Set Willy, Dizzy and The Last Ninja are some of the titles that still bring smiles to the faces of us 30-somethings when we recall those golden days. These were games that you really needed to invest in. You did not have saves so if you died you started again. If you turned it off, you started again. If someone tripped over the bloody cable just as you got to the moon on Jet Set Willy 2, you started again (it still hurts!) But yet this was an advanced machine and one that anyone who owned one looks back on with true feelings of affection.

So Sir Clive Sinclair we thank you for all those days and very happy memories and to the wonderful Spectrum 48k Happy Birthday!

This is the premise of Ubisoft Shanghai’s long awaited survival game I Am Alive. You play an everyman who has spent an entire year walking back to his home city of Haventon to find his wife and daughter.  The world is in ruins after ‘The Event’ and is plagued by after-shock earthquakes and poisonous dust clouds. Those humans that have survived, have been forced to do whatever is necessary to survive.

The games story is portrayed through the viewfinder of a camcorder as an unnamed girl watches your story unfold. Whilst you wander the streets documenting your story for your family. Along the way as you tackle gangs and manage your precious resources you stumble across a little girl and your quest to reunite her with her mother and see them to safety begins.

I Am Alive is an impressively ambitious title for an online game. In much the same way that Hydrophobia was although we can happily report that I Am Alive is infinitely more successful. Gameplay features heavily on resource management. There are no times when you will be armed up to the hilt with ammo, blowing away everyone in front of you. Instead you need to learn tactics to conserve the precious bullets you have.

The combat is unique, you can intimidate enemies with an empty gun, running the risk that they do not call your bluff. You can get them to back up and ultimately push them over a ledge if so desired. Also when many enemies approach you it is better to remain passive and surprise the first one with a knife before pulling your gun. It makes for some interesting tactical decisions as taking out the enemies with guns first so as to get their bullets is imperative.

Managing the rest of your resources is also key to success. Your health and stamina are split into two bars at the top of the screen. White for stamina and red for health. Running and climbing will deplete your stamina quickly and once it is depleted it will start to affect your health. When climbing for example, the moment your stamina runs out will will need to press the R1 button repeatedly to use the last bit of energy you have. If you do not make it to a safe ledge before it is gone entirely, you will fall. Once you get into the city there is a layer or thick poisonous dust that hangs low on the streets. Being inside this cloud will deplete your stamina and it will not replenish. The only way to survive is to climb above it, regain your stamina and then move on.

Throughout the game you will meet various characters, some will be friendly and some not. Even some of the more confrontational can be avoided by not making any aggressive moves, although many will be hell-bent on killing you for your resources. You will also meet people who are sick or injured, you can choose to help these people by giving them the required resource like a first aid kit or painkillers. Every time you help someone you are rewarded with an extra retry and some information that can assist you in your search for your family. Choosing not to help can have consequences on the person you leave behind. At one point I did not have the required resource to help someone who was stuck. I later returned to find they had hung themselves. It was an emotional and disturbing moment.

Graphically I Am Alive is excellent. The feeling or desolation is very real with cars and personal effects littering the landscape. Partly destroyed or collapsed buildings create the backdrop although the thick layer of dust that hangs in the air means the draw-distance never really allows for breath-taking views. The dust itself is well done but there are times when you would like to see the full extent of the damage ‘the event’ has caused. There are also some points when you have to negotiate the dust at night and these are extremely frustrating.

Gameplay is a real mixture innovation and firmly trodden ground. The unique combat system feels fresh and intelligent but becomes routine and over-used very quickly. In fact the fight scenes rarely do anything different throughout the entire game. Surprise the first guy, shoot the bloke with the gun and threaten the rest.  The climbing sections are as you would expect with the additional concern of stamina management. The use of pitons as an anchor point to rest and regain stamina is essential on some more lengthy climbs. Unfortunately that is pretty much all this game offers. You climb, fight or avoid fights and occasionally slide down the side of collapsed sky-scrapers. But then it is not the action sequences that make this game, it is the real feeling retaining hope in a hopeless situation. It is a game about humanity and the story of a normal man in extraordinary circumstances and in that I Am Alive truly excels. The level of emotional connection you get to the characters is in no small part due to the script and the voice acting. Both of which truly add to the depth of feeling achieved by this game.

For the most part the controls are pretty tight however there will be times when climbing that you want to move from a horizontal motion to a vertical one (or vice-versa) and your character will simply not respond correctly, constantly moving around in circles as you struggle to get him to go the way you want. I think this has something to do with the camera angle, but in a game where every second counts it is ultimately frustrating and really needed tightening up.

If I have one more complaint though it is the way the game ends. There has been no word as to whether the game is due to be episodic but the ending leaves you feeling unfulfilled. The story is incomplete and there must be a sequel in the works as it feels like it just stops mid-game. That said you do get around 5 hours of gameplay for the £11.99 price.

Overall though this is a great game. Yes there are parts that frustrate, the ending being the biggest one, but in general the feeling of humanity is tangible. You really feel for the characters and their plight and that is no mean feat for a game.

The DLC that Bethesda produced for Oblivion was substantial and added hours of gameplay. We can be sure that the new as yet untitled DLC will do the same.

In a press release the developer said, “Bethesda Game Studios has been hard at work on creating the first set of game add-ons that will be exclusive to the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft. This additional content will add new quests, locations, features, and much more to the world of Skyrim. Stay tuned, we hope to officially announce what it is soon.”

Whilst this suggests this will be Xbox exclusive and obviously it will be in terms of the Kinect functions, the DLC is going to be a timed exclusive.

There will undoubtedly be more news drip fed to us ravenous for more. As we get it so will you.

Until then here is the official trailer for the Kinect functions.

Built on the Unreal Engine WoD is an arena based car game where destruction is the name of the game. Playing out like a FPS on wheels it firmly reminds us of the classic Vigilante 8. The action is fast and furious (no pun intended) and there are plenty of vehicle classes to choose from. Gameplay is as you would imagine, drive about, find another car, blow the shit out of it! Repeat!

Three game modes are on offer and they are hardly original. Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture The Flag are all you get, but then are pretty much all you need. The game is split into classes that reward playing styles although to be fair these classes hardly change the paying experience. The levels are big, feature some neat ideas and are littered with power-ups that improve your vehicle. Again these are standard power-ups that you would find in any similar game. Some of the levels are so large however, that you can find yourself driving around all alone looking for anyone to have a scrap with.

Gelid Games have managed to wring out some sharp visuals for the environments from the Unreal Engine. Unfortunately the vehicles do not share the same level of polish and look decidedly average.

WoD has all the ingredients of  a great game but it is sorely let down by the controls. Utilising the same idea of steering that we saw in Halo, you point the camera where you want the car to go.  It was a stupid control method in Halo and for the life of me I can’t see why the developers have implemented this control method. It is just so unnatural and takes a lot of getting used to, even if you are experienced in Halo driving. The worse thing is, when things get a little hectic you find yourself trying to rotate the camera to get a shot only to get completely confused and frustrated as your thumbs muscle memory takes over and you try to drive the car away. If you persevere you can get the hang of the controls but even then you will still find them ultimately annoying when under pressure. The developers are obviously aware that the controls are an issue, so much so in fact that they have released a video to try to explain how to do it. You can watch it here.

In order to really master the controls you will need to put in a lot of time with this game. Unfortunately the game itself doesn’t have enough to keep you coming back. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot to like about Wheels of Destruction and it is certainly better than Smash ‘N’ Survive if the controls were more standard then it could have been a hit. Some will be anal enough to bother mastering the steering. Me? I have far too much drinking to do to be bothered.

The story goes (and there is a story, somewhat) that this Anti-Gravity was all sparked by a dude named Pierre Belmondo. Anti-Grav racing came about over a decade later, thanks to him and his physics genius. And lo, the Anti-Gravity Racing Championships (A.G.R.C.) was born. Here is where it all began, with an insight to how one man slowly changed the world. And, that’s it. That’s all the ‘story’ there’s ever been, really. Just bloody well get to racing, okay? No questions!

I must mention the visuals now. Nice. Very nice. As the first game I got for the Vita, its looks alone have me feeling very impressed with the handheld’s abilities. It’s on a par with HD on the PS3. It’s amazing to see so much detail in a handheld game. It’s gorgeous. No slowdown, no clipping, nothing. Explosions, lighting, glare, all that pretty stuff, it all looks great. The crafts themselves are all very highly-detailed. I love looking at 2048 – and the option to let the camera take a tour around a racecourse prior to each race, battle, or trial, allows me to lap it all up. A personal highlight is the first time I encountered the 2048 version of the ’Sol’ course (a new take on the HD one). It’s so impressive to just look at. Like the Sol map in HD, it looks very intimidating. Absolutely mind-blowing. Definitely my favourite race map on here, and even better when you get over the fear of being so high up in the sky, on a course with little to protect you from falling off.

All the photographic options in HD made it here. Pause a game any time you like, and  and you can tinker away at creating some of your own great race pics, if interested.

Wipeout has always been a series for providing great music soundtracks. Every game famously features such artists as The Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy and other stuff of that nature and each game has done so to pleasing effect. Great fast-paced tunes (generally in the key of techno) play along to as you fly. Again, I’m happy with this new soundtrack, although the choice of The Prodigy’s ‘Invaders Must Die’ is one I could gladly do without. There are extra tunes in there, too; beats from a couple of the other games that make a return in remix form. If, for some reason, this music is not your thing, or you get bored of it, you can always put Wipeout on hold by pressing the Vita’s PS button, and start up your own music to play along to.

Besides the music, 2048 features all the commonplace blips, bangs and booms and it throws in a load of sharp new announcer voice clips, and the crafts themselves chug along sounding similar to present-day Formula 1 cars, in a cool attempt at portraying earlier tech, and also reminiscent of the pod racing crafts in that scene off that Star Wars: Phantom Menace.. Only much cooler, and without that twat JaJa.

Everything here makes for a very slick, stylish, well-presented package. Menu screens are clear and intuitive, and there are more than enough options to adjust to your liking. From the start, you fly into the Single Player Campaign, where you’re met with a large event map full of tasks needed to progress (place at least 4th, get enough points in combat, beat this lap time, etc). The better you do, the more you get, so you’ll be focusing on ‘Elite’ passing of an event, placing first, not fourth.

2048 is also the first game of the series to actively encourage getting to know the many different AG vehicles for use in-game. You’ll need to, as along the way, certain events can only be accessed by one particular racing team (‘Qirex’, or ‘Auricom’ say). On startup, you’ll also see that each team presents different AG models, and you’ll be able to opt for the likes of the ‘Feisar Speed’, or AG Systems Fighter’ for example, and earn many more variations along the way. Models vary significantly: use of a Fighter-type will grant you the full benefits of any weapon you get – so it will fire 3 rockets at once, say – while others only fire one – but at the same time, loses out when the agility or speed of others is needed.

These race limitations also show up as races where you must battle with limited weaponry at the ready, or take on ‘Speed’ models in your slower ‘Fighter’, etcetera, etcetera.

Another brand new feature now places two types of item pad throughout the circuits. Hover over the green pad for defensive tools (Shield, Mines, Leech Beam, and more), or fly over an orange pad for the offensive stuff (Quake, Missile, Rocket.). This is a very good change to proceedings, and brings more thought and forward thinking into play. Of course, the speed boost pads are back, too. I point this out, because you are seriously gonna need them, most of the time. You’ll need to study course routes and pad placement, to get ahead. You’ll definitely want to learn where all those short cuts are and there are loads of them, but unlike most games, these are short cuts that require a fair bit of skill to traverse. There are even some you’ll need some really serious speed just to reach. At first, you might find yourself thinking some of them make no difference to race times or position, but they do. It really is worth taking the time to find and master using them.

The farther you advance, the faster 2048 gets – and it gets crazy fast. Plus, when you work so hard to concentrate and head for the finish line, only to be passed at the last nanosecond by a fellow competitor, it can also get annoying. Like, Mario Kart-annoying. There came a point where, even though I frown at ever using Pilot Assist (as featured in Wipeout HD), I had to switch it on. The corners thrown at you – some even in the lowly ‘Class C’ races – are fiendish.  So God help you when you reach Class A events (I’d love to hear what you think of the ‘Subway’ circuit).

Next on the menu are the Online Campaign, Ad-Hoc and Cross Play modes.

In Online, you find a new map of challenges, to again get a ‘Pass’ or ‘Elite Pass’. You’re shot into competition against 7 random opponents online – most of whom provide some BEAUTIFUL mugshots of themselves prior to each race (fortunately, it’s not compulsory to take photos of yourself) – and you come away with a pass for just taking part, in most cases.

Adhoc is there for Vita-to-Vita multiplayer battles with others in person, as is the norm, I guess. But then Cross Play comes along, providing something totally different.

As far as my experience with Cross Play goes, it’s pretty cool. There’s a little confusion at first on how to set it up. I’ve been able to join random matches using my Vita, but I can’t get into a match against a friend controlling my own PS3, as of yet. It would be nice to have a lobby feature in Wipeout 2048. As it stands, there isn’t one. The Vita just randomly joins a lobby, and you wait. My first time playing, I had set up a race on my Vita, around HD’s ‘Anulpha Pass’ course. And all of a sudden, a stranger shows up to race me, via PS3. It works, is all I can say, after a few battles. I don’t know how it works, but it does. And it’s weird, yet nice, to see HD’s tracks on the Vita. Future patches are in the cards to make a good idea a great one. I’m very curious to see how it works out.

The world of Wipeout demands your focus and concentration and it’s required if you want to achieve anything. It works well as a game for short bursts of play, but it’s challenge keeps me playing it for a long time.

If I have any complaints about Wipeout 2048, it would be the loading times (which have now been reduced by 50% after a patch), and the fact that, at present, even though the challenge becomes rock-hard for those without decent reflexes, the game is actually quite small in content.

With a lot of planned DLC that didn’t make it on release day coming soon though, including more Cross Play support (as mentioned earlier), and the hinted-at ‘AR Museum’ (new content involving the use of the Augmented Reality cards provided with the Vita on purchase), it’s definitely worth a look. So, because both matters (which have never really bothered me at all) are being amended, I find no fault with this game. I might randomly shout the odd swearword whilst I play, but that’s expected. I’ve gotta get those Elite Passes, damn it!

Before buying a Vita, I always knew this would be the first game I purchased for it. I reckon Wipeout 2048 is, as they say, ‘one of those games you shouldn’t be without’, if you own a PS Vita. I’m very glad I chose it as my first Vita game; it’s gonna spend a lot of time inside the console.

In a deal worth £50m GAME will now continue trading in the UK, safeguarding some 3200 jobs. OpCapita will also be re-hiring some of the senior head office staff axed last week by administrators PwC and former Halfords’ chief executive David Hamid will be installed as a new chairman for the group.

GAME’s banks will have to take a 55% write-down of the £88m owed and some £40m owed to suppliers will have to be written off. However, it seems likely that agreements will have been made to get new software into shops as soon as possible.

In a statement, OpCapita’s managing director Henry Jackson said “We strongly believe there is a place on the high street for a video gaming specialist and we have assembled a strong team to implement the programme of operational change needed. There is a huge amount to do but we look forward to the challenge of restoring GAME’s fortunes in partnership with its employees and suppliers.”

Good news all round then. Although no word yet on whether customers gift vouchers or pre-orders would be valid again. We are going to endeavour to find out and, as always will keep you posted.

So the bank that was bailed out by the Taxpayer not so long ago will then own GAME. It brings into sharp focus the reason why RBS were unwilling to enter into talks to rescue the group before administration. It seems like gamesmanship of the highest order and quite worrying when 2100 jobs have just been lost.

In an even stranger development, RBS itself (currently state owned) is looking likely to be bought by an Abu Dhabi consortium. So a bank that is up for sale is going to buy a company that it refused to help out before being sold to Middle Eastern owners. So two of the country’s most recognisable brands may soon be foreign owned.

Mike Jervis (spokesman for PwC) said that whilst the cuts were severe it was a necessary move to make the company viable as a business and that GAME had too many shops and needed far fewer. Jervis also confirmed that the suspension of GAME credits is only a temporary measure.  The administrators have also taken both Gamestation and GAMES websites off-line. It is unlikely that Gamestation will re-emerge. It is also debatable if GAME.co.uk will either.

These closures come as a backdrop across the country whilst PwC are “Still confident a buyer can be found for the group.” A full statement also read “The group has faced serious cashflow and profit issues over the recent past. It also has suffered from high fixed costs, an ambitious international roll-out and fluctuating working capital requirements,” said Mike Jervis, joint administrator.

“Despite these challenges, we believe that there is room for a specialist game retailer in the territories in which it operates, including its biggest one, the UK. As a result we are hopeful that a going concern sale of the business is achievable.”

We hope so also as this is going to cast a very large hole in the UK gaming retail business. How long the process of finding a buyer may take is anybodies guess as is whether there are any ongoing negotiations.

We can only wait and see.

Has your local GAME or Gamestation closed its doors today?